Miss Denham's power of commanding sleep, as he could not, though contrary
to custom he tried it on the right side and the left, set him thinking of
her. He owned she was pretty. But that, he contended, was not the word;
and the word was undiscoverable. Not Cecilia Halkett herself had so
high-bred an air, for Cecilia had not her fineness of feature and full
quick eyes, of which the thin eyelids were part of the expression. And
Cecilia sobbed, snifed, was patched about the face, reddish, bluish.
This girl was pliable only to service, not to grief: she did her work for
three-and-twenty hours, and fell to her sleep of one hour like a soldier.
Lord Romfrey could not recollect anything in a young woman that had taken
him so much as the girl's tossing out of the rug and covering herself,
lying down and going to sleep under his nose, absolutely independent of
his presence.
She had not betrayed any woman's petulance with him for his conduct to
her uncle or guardian. Nor had she hypocritically affected the reverse,
as ductile women do, when they feel wanting in force to do the other.
She was not unlike Nevil's marquise in face, he thought: less foreign of
course; looking thrice as firm. Both were delicately featured.
He had a dream.
It was of an interminable procession of that odd lot called the People.
All of them were quarrelling under a deluge. One party was for
umbrellas, one was against them: and sounding the dispute with a question
or two, Everard held it logical that there should be protection from the
wet: just as logical on the other hand that so frail a shelter should be
discarded, considering the tremendous downpour. But as he himself was
dry, save for two or three drops, he deemed them all lunatics. He
requested them to gag their empty chatter-boxes, and put the mother upon
that child's cry.
He was now a simple unit of the procession. Asking naturally whither
they were going, he saw them point. 'St. Paul's,' he heard. In his own
bosom it was, and striking like the cathedral big bell.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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